Way back in October 2015, Cheer Up! Games launched a Kickstarter for Cheer Up! that didn’t quite make its goal. We took a few months off, and in an attempt to get this right next time, worked on a total redesign of the game. Now it’s finally ready for your eyes! And your other orifices.

If you took our post-campaign survey, thanks! We used all your feedback to improve the game significantly, particularly the graphic design elements, without altering the award-winning gameplay (this game is the only winner of the Niko Invitational Golden Bone Award For Best Game Designed By A Human-Dog Team.) Let’s run through a couple of the major alterations to get you up to speed, and get you playing! (Click on the photos to enlarge them.)

Fancy!

The first thing you’ll notice is that theD, T, and A answer cards have been replaced with A, B, and C respectively. This is a controversial change we realize, but ultimately we think it makes it a lot easier for new players to understand how the cards go together. Stay tuned for a more-in depth post about our philosophy behind this change, but we’ll see how it works out.

The overall graphic design and card backs have been improved with some simple graphics. The main colors have also been adjusted from pastel colors to more solid colors.

The Questions got a makeover, too. Now each type of question has a distinct Niko graphic associate with it, as well as the corresponding answer card colors at the top, making each type (A+B, A+B+C, etc.) much more unique. This should help with readability and gets Niko a little more involved in the design.

In case you missed it, all questions now require multiple answers, even when they feature the same type of answer card (A+A, B+B, and C+C). This makes for much more variety and improvisation while playing. (This change was updated at the tail end of the Kickstarter, but now it’s been solidified in the new color version.)

In general, you now have quite a bit more freedom when creating answers. While the cards do have to stay in the correct order, feel free to add some smaller words in between the cards to make them make sense. Instead of dictating what you should say exactly, the answer cards are more like guidelines. However, try to stay as close to the original words as possible. A one sheet explaining tips for what we mean will be included in the new B&W version to help you out, but here are some perfect examples.

Question: "What's buried in your yard?"

You say: "My babysitter's dildo."

Question: "What do you not want to wake up next to?"

You say: "A toilet, while vomiting profusely."

Question: "What should be legal?"

You say: "Streaking and drinking breast milk."

Rule cards! Some nice graphics, and improved title readability. We’ve also eliminated the Roman Numerals for the recurring cards, which was confusing for some. Also, all the rule text is now in third person, and addresses actions that specific players have to take. (Some people had a hard time with the previous version, when the card was addressing the dealer as “you.” We think it's because people were too drunk to realize that the cards weren't actually talking to them.)

Overall, about 20% of the answer cards were replaced or updated based on feedback and testing. Some questions and rules that didn’t really work have been replaced or reworded as well. We think this is by far the strongest version of the game to date!

And best of all, we updated the free downloadable B&W version of Cheer Up! with all of these changes (well, just the text-based ones) so you can play the updates right meow! If you want to see more of the color version, you’ll just have to look at the pretty pictures, or play with us in person at a game night or a convention. Otherwise, the only other way is if we fund our next Kickstarter. And if you’ve read this far, why not help us out and spread the word! Check the page footer for our social links!

Well, I think that about does it. We’ll be promo-ing this game hard over the new few months to build up our following. Keep doing what you’re doing and if you have any feedback from play-testing, our inbox is always open - chris@cheerupgames.com